Packaging systems, such as magazines or trays, made of thin plastics material are now used predominantly to ship and handle electrical connectors and components. More recently, magazines and trays have been adapted to be used with robotics equipment; e.g., in mounting electrical connectors onto printed circuit boards.
Known magazines, such as taught in U.S. Pat. No. 3,184,056 to Kisor, and trays, as taught in U.S. Pat. No. 4,671,407 to Brutosky, have a single layer of one row. Such a construction, i.e., a single layer, has heretofore been the only structure available for electrical connectors having leads extending outwardly from one surface thereof. For these type connectors, shoulders are required to support the connectors so that the leads can extend into a space to prevent damage thereto and to permit the connectors to slide freely into and out of the row or rows. Multiple layers of connectors are provided by stacking discrete magazines and trays on top of each other. In an effort to improve upon this system and also to economize, one worker in the field, Brutosky, provided trays having downwardly extending skirts which provided an end cover for the underlying tray to confine the connectors during shipping and handling. The aforementioned U.S. Pat. No. 4,671,407 discloses this feature.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,583,641 to Gelzer teaches an article packaging system which is a continuous carrier tape onto which articles, such as electrical connectors, are mounted. The connectors, with their leads inserted into locating holes in the carrier tape, are secured against such tape by an overlapping bonding strip. The bonding strip is secured to such tape b an interlocking means intermediate the contained articles, i.e. connectors in this exemplary teaching.
In the practice of this invention, it is proposed to provide a packaging system in which it is possible to double up on the articles to be contained by such system, as well as to provide a means to protect such articles, such as electrical connectors which have plural leads projecting therefrom.